Don’t Fight the Fed — Housing Edition “I am still aware of the inorganic nature of the improvement [in housing], but the key takeaway is a) US housing market down 35% eventually stabilizes; 2) do not under-estimate the ability of a determined Central Bank to impact any specific market it chooses.” –Barry Ritholtz, “Mea Culpas...Read More
The Ultimate Reality Test? Reality “And yet, it moves.” –What Galileo Galilei supposedly murmured on his death-bed, after being forced by the Church to recant his belief that the earth moves around the sun. What is the ultimate rebuttal to housing bears, who maintain that the housing market isn’t going up, but even if it is,...Read More
So, The New York Times has finally weighed in on the “Has Housing Bottomed?” debate, casting its vote on the side of the bulls. Its leading example? The Twin Cities housing market: Joe Niece, a real estate agent in the Minneapolis suburb of Eden Prairie, said he recently concluded a streak of 13 consecutive bidding...Read More
“Do Deflated Bubbles Always Overshoot?” Cont. The Green Bay Packers never lost a game. They just ran out of time. –Vince Lombardi If you missed my tête-à -tête last week with Barry Ritholtz (“Why the Housing Bears are Bearish“), let me summarize: Mr. Ritholtz wrote that, even after a 35% drop from the peak nationally, housing...Read More
Contrarian Indicators — Housing Market Edition If you like contrarian indicators, here’s a good one, courtesy of today’s New York Times: “Housing Fades as a Means to Build Wealth, Analysts Say” —headline, NYT (8/23/2010) Or as Barry Ritholtz puts it, “the time to be an über-bear on Housing (or anything, really) is before the collapse...Read More
